On Enabling Smart Government: A Legal Logistics Framework for Future Criminal Justice Systems

Abstract

While in business and private settings the disruptive impact of advanced information communication technology (ICT) have already been felt, the legal sector is now starting to face great disruptions due to such ICTs. Bits and pieces of innovations in the legal sector have been emerging for some time, affecting the performance of core functions and the legitimacy of public institutions. In this paper, we present our framework for enabling the smart government vision, particularly for the case of criminal justice systems, by unifying different isolated ICT-based solutions. Our framework, coined as Legal Logistics, supports the well-functioning of a legal system in order to streamline the innovations in these legal systems. The framework targets the exploitation of all relevant data generated by the ICT-based solutions. As will be illustrated for the Dutch criminal justice system, the framework may be used to integrate different ICT-based innovations and to gain insights about the well-functioning of the system. Furthermore, Legal Logistics can be regarded as a roadmap towards a smart and open justice.